Over 50 procedures disrupted at Pasqua Hospital after pipe bursts

More than 50 procedures at the Pasqua Hospital had to be postponed or moved to the General Hospital Thursday after a water pipe burst in the gastrointestinal unit (G.I.) Wednesday night.

“The problem with hospitals is that they’re built in floors,” said Dr. David McCutcheon, vice-president of physician and integrated health services. “A leak on the third floor in the G.I. unit then went down into the second floor and then went down int the first floor.”

The Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR) unit was damaged, as well as areas in the floors beneath, including the medical surveillance unit (MSU), cardiac function clinic and radiology.

In addition, eight MSU patients were transferred to other units.

Cleanup and repairs are underway.

“You would not believe the commitment of our environmental services staff, nursing staff (for) not only making sure their patients and facilities were safe, same with the imaging staff, they took all the safety precautions they needed to take,” Dr. McCutcheon said. “I had nothing to do when I arrived except to command the immediate actions of everybody who was there — the response was really superb, very professional … (especially) given the amount of water that was there.”

Dr. McCutcheon added water in some medical rooms were ‘up over the baseboard’.

The radiology department reopened Thursday morning and the RQHR expected the eight displaced patients to be transferred back to the MSU Thursday afternoon.

Patients and doctors were notified of the rescheduling of procedures Wednesday night. The health region expects procedures to be rescheduled in the next two weeks with no further postponements to occur.

—With files from Jessika Guse